The present invention relates generally to a wire strike assembly for use with a drawer housing.
The drawers found in desks, filing cabinets, and other storage fixtures or furnishings may become dislodged if the drawer is subject to forces caused by excess vibration, jarring, and other movements. Cabinets and other storage furnishing used on commercial shipping and trucks or on aircraft are especially likely to experience the vibrational effects that may result in the drawer being unintentionally opened during transit. As a result, the contents of files, supplies, and even valuables stored in these drawers used in commercial vehicles are more likely to fall out, be removed without permission, lost or even destroyed with the drawer unintentionally opened by the vibrational effects experienced during transit.
It is understood that prior art wire strikes that are mountable to the top face of a drawer housing are configured to receive a spring-biased latch that may be a component of a locking assembly on the drawer. However, in order to mount the wire strike on the top face such that it is properly positioned to receive the spring-biased latch, it is understood that these prior art devices require the entire wire strike to be remounted onto the top face if its original position is not properly aligned with the spring-biased latch or otherwise requires adjustment. As a result, the proper fitting of the wire strike on the top face of the drawer housing in these prior art devices may be a time consuming process requiring meticulous measurement of the positioning of the wire strike and the spring-biased latch. Accordingly, users of these prior art devices may end up misaligning the wire strike with the spring-biased latch or due to the difficulty involved in their proper installation, they may forgo the use of any wire strike on the top face of the drawer housing. As a result, the contents of drawers in commercial vehicles or airplanes utilizing prior art wire strike devices may end up being removed, lost, or destroyed in the same manner as if no wire strike device were being used. Therefore, short of physically locking the drawer (to the extent there is a lock) on each and every occasion, a drawer may be subject to vibrational forces, the contents of these drawers may not be sufficiently secure with the use of prior art wire strike devices. Even if the user remembers to lock the drawer on each occasion, the key used to open the drawer lock may be easily lost or the combination used to open the lock may be forgotten.
Accordingly, there appears to be a need in the art for a new wire strike assembly that enables the wire strike to be readily adjusted to align with the spring-biased latch in an efficient manner while the wire strike assembly remains mounted to the drawer housing.